About the Artist

Raebird Creations LLC is the art-based business of Saraiya Kanning. As a silk painter, creative writer, and flutist, Saraiya finds the creative process integral to everyday life. Creative activity helps the mind focus, open up, relax, and make exciting discoveries. Far more than makers of objects pleasing to the eye, artists are adventurous, curious, and inquisitive. Artists are storytellers, songsters, painters, gardeners, sculptors, and more. They imbue their communities with vibrant energy.

Saraiya received her BA in Creative Writing from Colorado College and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She has practiced the visual arts, including charcoal, graphite, watercolor, and acrylic, for over 20 years. In 2012, Kanning received a grant that enabled her to explore the intersection of words and visual art while watercolor journaling at sites such as Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Her bird art has been featured on several t-shirts for ornithological and birding conferences, including the 2015 and 2018 Pikes Peak Birding Festival in Colorado Springs. A selection of scarves and blank greeting cards of her artwork can be found in the Tucson Audubon Gift Shop.

Saraiya's current projects include a series of landscape scarves displaying locales such as the Konza Prairie in Kansas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sonoran Desert. She is also developing a series of hangable silk paintings depicting borderlands wildlife, including jaguars, coatimundi, and jackrabbits.

As an educator, Saraiya believes that all people possess creative potential. Creativity can be practiced and developed. Her classes aim to nurture the seeds of creativity in each participant through art-making. In these classes and workshops, participants learn foundational skills in their chosen medium and expand their powers of observation. She especially enjoys teaching subjects related to wildlife, ecology, and landscape. Saraiya lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband, Michael.